Perhaps it’s just happenstance, but as of April Fool’s Day, it’s official: We’re surrounded.

That’s the day Sunday package alcohol sales started to the east of Columbia County, in neighboring Augusta. And it was 17 Sundays ago that Sunday sales started in the southwestern part of the county, in Grovetown.

He and I didn’t always agree. But there’s no one I’d rather have on the other side of an argument.

No matter what your position, with Tommy you knew exactly where you stood, and you damn sure knew where he stood.

“It was all black or white. There were no gray areas,” says Jim Whitehead, a boyhood friend and former county commission colleague. The two grew up together, and Whitehead, like a great many other people in our community, is heartbroken at Mercer’s death Wednesday at age 70.

Laws don’t exist just to punish dishonest people. They also exist to keep honest people honest.

That isn’t to say people would be dishonest, or dishonorable, without laws forcing them to do otherwise, except for one thing: They would be.

Want proof? Let’s have a show of hands: How many of you have purchased something from a Web site, and at the end of the year have on your own written a check to the state to pay the sales taxes on that item?

In that fantasy of a perfect world that won’t ever exist, surely there would be far less angst over minor details. Especially bureaucratic details.

Instead, we have a school board on Tuesday that likely will be at odds because of a span of seven days in two school calendars.

Set aside the fact that the school board probably shouldn’t be involved in approving the specifics of a school-year calendar anyway. Trustees are supposed to set policy, not get involved in such nuts-and-bolts minutia.

A survey last week of Georgians’ opinions regarding several issues before the state Legislature determined that just 16 percent strongly favor the attempt to amend the state constitution to allow charter schools without local oversight.

Did you realize that during his next term in office, Columbia County Sheriff Clay Whittle will celebrate 20 years as our county’s top cop?

Since his special election to the post back in 1995, Whittle has outlasted pretty much every other head law enforcement officer in our area. In a county as safe as ours, we tend to forget that peace and tranquility are no accident.

But we’re suddenly reminded when things happen as they did in a 24-hour span last week.

Of the 18,091 Columbia County residents who took the trouble to perform their civic duty by going to the polls on Super Tuesday, 79 of them cast their valuable vote for a candidate who had quit the presidential race.

While I suppose those 79 votes could be an endorsement of “none of the above,” or an endorsement of a candidate the voters wished had stayed in the race, each vote was still wasted.

It’s interesting to note that of those votes, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann tied with 30 each. Jon Huntsman received 19 votes.

We’ve had a mini-explosion lately of local Web-enabled groups claiming to speak for one cause or another. Other than anonymity, a common factor is their general negativity.

One such group, in fact, even embraces the name of C.A.V.E. people – Citizens Against Virtually Everything – apparently failing to understand that the title is a public dunce cap for the willfully ignorant.